WEST SACRAMENTO, California — Climate change is putting pressure on rainforests where the highly sensitive cocoa bean grows, but chocolate lovers need not despair, say companies researching alternative ways to grow cocoa or developing cocoa substitutes.
Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on ways to produce more cocoa beyond the tropics, from Northern California to Israel.
California Cultured, a plant cell-growing company, is growing cacao from cell cultures at a facility in West Sacramento, California, with plans to begin selling its products next year. The company places cacao bean cells in a vat of sugar water, so they reproduce quickly and mature in a week instead of the six to eight months a traditional harvest takes, said Alan Perlstein, the company’s CEO. The process also doesn’t require as much water or labor.
“We’re already seeing the demand for chocolate just monstrously outstrip what’s going to be available,” Perlstein said. “There’s really no other way we can see the world significantly increasing the supply of cocoa or still keeping it affordable without extensive environmental degradation or other significant costs.”
Cocoa trees grow about 20 degrees north and south of the equator in warm, rainy areas including West Africa and South America. Climate change is expected to dry out the land with extra heat. So scientists, entrepreneurs and chocolate lovers are coming up with ways to grow cocoa and make the crop more resilient and pest-resistant — and to create chocolatey cocoa alternatives to meet demand.
The market for chocolate is huge, with U.S. sales expected to top $25 billion by 2023, according to the National Confectioners Association. Many entrepreneurs are betting that demand will outpace cocoa supply. Companies are looking to expand supply with cell-based cocoa or offer alternatives made from products ranging from oats to carob that are roasted and flavored to produce a chocolatey flavor for chips or fillings.
The price of cocoa increased earlier this year due to demand and crop problems in West Africa caused by plant diseases and weather changes. The region produces the majority of the world’s cocoa.
“All of this contributes to potential instability in supply, so it’s attractive for these lab-grown or cocoa replacement companies to think about ways to replace that ingredient that we know as chocolate,” said Carla D. Martin, executive director of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute and a lecturer in African and African American studies at Harvard University.
The innovation is largely driven by demand for chocolate in the U.S. and Europe, Martin said. While three-quarters of the world’s cocoa is grown in West and Central Africa, only 4 percent is consumed there, she said.
The push to produce cocoa in-house in the U.S. comes as other products, such as chicken, have already been grown in labs. It also comes as grocery store shelves are filling up with evolving snack options — something developers of cocoa alternatives say shows people are ready to try what looks and tastes like a chocolate chip cookie, even if the chip contains a cocoa substitute.
They said they also hope to tap into growing consumer awareness about where their food comes from and what goes into growing it, particularly the use of child labor in the cocoa industry.
Planet A Foods in Planegg, Germany, claims that the flavor of mass-market chocolate comes largely from the fermentation and roasting that goes into making it, not from the cocoa bean itself. The company’s founders tested ingredients ranging from olives to seaweed and settled on a blend of oats and sunflower seeds as the tastiest chocolate alternative, said Jessica Karch, a company spokesperson. They called it “ChoViva” and it can be used in baked goods, she said.
“The idea is not to replace the high-quality, 80% dark chocolate, but to offer many different products to the mass market,” says Karch.
While some are trying to create alternative cocoa sources and substitutes, others are trying to increase the cocoa supply where it naturally grows. Mars, which M&Ms. and Snickers has a research facility at the University of California, Davis, focused on making cocoa plants more resilient, said Joanna Hwu, the company’s senior director of cocoa plant science. The facility houses a living collection of cocoa trees, so scientists can study what makes them disease-resistant to help farmers in producing countries and ensure a stable supply of beans.
“We see it as an opportunity and our responsibility,” Hwu said.
In Israel, efforts are also underway to expand the cocoa supply. Celleste Bio takes cocoa bean cells and grows them indoors to produce cocoa powder and cocoa butter, co-founder Hanne Volpin said. In a few years, the company expects to be able to produce cocoa regardless of the impact of climate change and disease — an effort that has piqued the interest of Mondelez, the maker of Cadbury chocolate.
“We only have a small field, but eventually we will have a bioreactor farm,” Volpin said.
That’s similar to the efforts of California Cultured, which is seeking permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to call its product chocolate, which Perlstein says it is.
It may eventually be called brewery chocolate or local chocolate, but no less chocolate, he said, because it is genetically identical even though it doesn’t come from a tree.
“We are essentially seeing that we are growing cocoa, but in a different way,” Perlstein said.
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Taxin reported from Santa Ana, California.
